so a useful event for the obama campaign. and again, a way to bank votes early, particularly among students who they want to be free on election day to volunteer and help get out the vote. >> you know, it's kind of interesting though, jamie. people are starting to vote before we've even had our first debate in this election between the two candidates head-to-head. so you got to wonder if some people would rather have waited until maybe thursday to send in their votes. these must be people who have known for a long time and that's it. >> well, yeah. you raise a good point. this is a calculus that the obama campaign seems to be depending on, is that they can mitigate some of the risk of a bad debate, perhaps, by banking these votes early to make sure that they can build it up. and they point to a statistic, alex, that in 2008 obama lost the election on election day here in iowa. but won overall in iowa because of votes that the campaign had banked prior to the election day on early voting. >> jamie, thank you. >>> in a moment,